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Gun Reform in America
Introduction
Just a month after Newtown, Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School mass
shooting that left twenty-six dead, then United States President Barack Obama began to unveil
new plans regarding the continued excessive gun violence in the country. Despite the 2013 bill
gaining popularity among the public, every major proposal within it fell through when brought to
Congress (O’Keefe and Rucker). While it may have been seen as a moderate setback at the time
for gun reform, the impacts from the shot-down bill have certainly shown in the past few years.
In 2016, a gunman entered a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida and proceeded to kill forty-nine
people. The deadliest mass shooting in the United States’ history occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada
when fifty-eight were killed during a music festival. The most recent and now relevant massacre
took place in Parkland, Florida when seventeen were killed at Stoneman Douglas High School.
Since that February 2018 attack, protests for gun reform such as The March for Our Lives have
formed across the nation in response to the substantial amount of school shootings. While most
citizens— seventy percent— do agree that the United States should have tighter gun laws in the
wake of the Parkland shooting (Agiesta), there has still been a lack of significant discussion and
ultimately change at the federal level. Without Congress establishing stricter firearm regulations
in order to address the serious conflict of gun violence in the country, there will continue to be
more events of mass shootings.
Background
Though it was officially the first documentation regarding gun rights in the Constitution,
the Second Amendment was in the making even before the United States declared its
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independence. According to Tom Price, the Founding Fathers feared that without Constitutional
restraints, the federal government could emulate European kings’ penchant for waging war”
(Price 642). Even in the early years of the North American colonies, governments would be on
edge about the ideas and influence people could have if given the appropriate reservoir. When
informed about religious heresy amongst a hundred of its colonists, the “Massachusetts Bay
Colony seized guns and ammunition” (Price 642) from them. It was determined by the drafters of
the Constitution that the only way for the country’s citizens to be both safe and free, was for
them to be armed. When it was first written in 1789, the Second Amendment read as “A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (The Second Amendment).
Despite it being part of the supreme law of the United States, states could still make laws
